


songs out of emptiness

by wordstruck



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Established Relationship, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Greek Mythology AU, M/M, Magical Realism, Violinist Viktor, aftermath of Major Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 15:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10970331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstruck/pseuds/wordstruck
Summary: In Ancient Greece, a man named Orpheus had once played for the Lord of the Underworld to beg for his love to be given back. In present time, violin prodigy Viktor Nikiforov finds a new way to wield his violin.(A Viktuuri rewrite of my original Songs Out of Emptiness fanfic)





	songs out of emptiness

**Author's Note:**

> So as stated, this is a rewrite of a Johnlock fic I wrote a few years ago, but for Viktuuri. In it, Viktor Nikiforov is a violin prodigy and Katsuki Yuuri is still a figure skater. **AN IMPORTANT NOTE:** this fic is tagged as major character death bc the fic is not centered around the character death, but on the AFTERMATH. The tag is only a disclaimer.
> 
> The premise of the fic is the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; if you're not familiar with it, you can read it [here](https://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/orpheus-and-eurydice/)!
> 
> Briefly beta'd by my friend (Mau is still jetlagged haha) but if you see any errors, feel free to tell me!
> 
> Come find me on Twitter for more YOI AUs/HCs at [@okw_tr](https://twitter.com/okw_tr) and on tumblr at [@vktr-nkfrv](https://vktr-nkfrv.tumblr.com/)!!

* * *

 

 

After Katsuki Yuuri dies, Viktor Nikiforov is quiet.

He’s always thought that when your heart shatters, it will be loud; there will be tears and tearing at your hair and even screaming. He’s thought that people get drunk and spend hours upon hours crying. It would be a chaos of emotions, a hurricane; a fracturing of yourself until everything is in pieces.

In reality, Viktor discovers, when the heart shatters it is not loud. Rather, it is simply the soft splintering of your soul as your whole being comes undone, leaving you with nothing but emptiness. Your heart quietly, painstakingly unravels and ebbs, leaving you with nothing but a void. Leaving you in only a terrifying silence.

When Katsuki Yuuri dies, the only noises in the hospital room are the incessant flat beep of the heart monitor and the hollow of the doctor’s voice as she calls the time of death. Katsuki Yuuri dies, and Viktor is quiet.

And in everything, Viktor blames only himself.

 

 

In the aftermath, Viktor remains quiet.

No one can make him speak. Chris tries to cajole him, visiting and sitting by Viktor, prodding him with gentle stories and questions, but Viktor gives no reply. Mila fusses around him, but Viktor simply tunes her out. One time, Georgi suggests maybe Viktor should move somewhere else or at least put away some of Yuuri’s things. But this earns him such a _look_ that Georgi goes cold and even Mila is shaken. Nobody suggests anything of the sort after that.

It is Yuri who gets Viktor to move, just a little; it is Yuri who shares something of the same grief, after all. Yuri is the one who gets him to eat, small things like fruits and pirozhki; is the one who curls up beside Viktor on the couch and leans against him. Sometimes Otabek comes with him, and they are all quiet while Viktor simply sits and breathes into empty spaces.

(In that same season, Yuri smashes through every record he’s made and takes every competition with a frightening, single-minded determination. He doesn’t attend the banquets, the after-parties. His smile on the ice is like a knife edge, when he smiles at all.)

Viktor sees Yuri skate, and remembers Yuuri. Remembers how bright and beautiful he had been, how free. Viktor had never restrained his admiration and awe, his love for everything Yuuri had laid out on the ice. And in return, he gave Yuuri his music, pulling songs from his fingers for Yuuri to skate to, songs that would encompass everything inside of him and between them. Every note, every score, every astonishing show of genius had been for that beautiful, sweet boy from Hasetsu, to whom Viktor had wanted to give the world.

In the darkness of his Nevsky Prospekt apartment, Viktor sits, holding onto an old sweater of Yuuri’s. He sits there and thinks that now, his whole world is gone.

 

 

Each time the sun rises, Viktor looks around his home and remembers.

Memory is a painful and terrible thing, and yet Viktor clings to it like a lifeline. He thinks that he might hurt less if he could forget, but he refuses to; memory is all he has left. Amidst what remains of the home they had built together, the life they had shared, all he can do is remember, so that something of Yuuri will persist and linger.

He remembers how Yuuri had looked in the mornings: sleep-rumpled, smiling blearily, eyes crinkled shut against the daylight as he murmurs a good morning. He remembers how Yuuri had looked in their living room, playing with Makkachin on the floor with graceful limbs spread out and laughter spilling from his mouth. He remembers how Yuuri had felt wrapped around him in the night, pulling him close; how his fingers had felt carding through Viktor’s hair and brushing down his jaw. He remembers how Yuuri’s lips would sometimes taste like strawberries.

He remembers the first time they had kissed, exhilarated and breathless, the first time Yuuri had ever won gold: Viktor standing in the lobby amidst a throng of reporters and fans, and Yuuri emerging with pink cheeks and bright eyes. There had been no hesitations when Yuuri had looked over at him and smiled; in that moment, all Viktor could think about was that _I love him._

( _All the papers the next day, talking about the relationship of Russian violin prodigy Viktor Nikiforov and Japanese figure skating sensation Katsuki Yuuri, but all Viktor had cared about was that Yuuri loved him back.)_

He remembers the first time Yuuri had taken him to bed, and how every touch had made his skin feel electric, how he had felt like drowning and flying all at once. He remembers the last time and the last kiss, easy as breathing, walking down the street on a snowy Monday evening.

Viktor curls up and into himself slowly, painfully.

That had been the last time they’d had together, as well.

 

 

The sweater he’s been clutching no longer smells like Yuuri, so Viktor gets up to root through the laundry pile in their room (and how Yuuri would scold him about the chores, _Viktor, you can’t just leave things like this!)_. He opens the closet to poke around, and accidentally dislodges something from behind a pile of Yuuri’s shirts.

It’s a package, long and slim, painstakingly but clumsily wrapped. There’s a small card on it, and on it, in awkward Russian print, is written Viktor’s name and the phrase _Happy Birthday._ (A birthday Yuuri will no longer be here for, the first one he will miss since they had met.)

With shaking fingers, Viktor picks it up and unwraps it. The _schick_ of tearing paper is almost deafening after having gone so long only hearing the sounds of the city outside and his own breathing.

It’s a violin bow.

It’s not an expensive one, nothing terribly high-class, not like the French or Italian bows that Viktor has used over the years. He can tell the wood isn’t the best, nor the hair with which it’s strung. It’s simple, functional, and carefully if a bit inexpertly polished. Viktor looks at it and thinks that it was probably the best Yuuri could have afforded on his own.

( _And he remembers, that fight they’d had, when Yuuri had just flown in from Skate Canada and Viktor had been practicing until the ungodly hours of the morning. He’d forgotten, foolishly, and Yuuri had stormed out of their room and snatched the bow from his hands, yelling at Viktor to stop because it was driving him crazy, and neither of them had noticed at first the loud crack as the bow snapped on contact with a nearby table, until Viktor’s eyes had gone wide and he’d let out a strangled gasp—)_

Viktor waits for the grief to well up, the noise to come. He waits for tears, for sobs, for screams, for the inevitable explosion of emotions that he has likely long been due. But instead the chasm inside of him only seems to widen, dark and bottomless and soundless, breaking him further open.

Suddenly, Viktor cannot stand the silence.

He takes the bow and stands, leaving the jumble of the closet behind him. He’s not sure when he last changed his clothes but he doesn’t care. He looks like a mess but it doesn’t matter. This, what he has in his hands, is something of Yuuri that is more than just a memory, and that alone warms him like nothing has since that horrible November evening. He cradles it in his palm as he searches for a box that has gone dusty from lack of use.

It is Mila who hears first; she is outside the apartment building, on her way to check if Viktor has eaten and if perhaps they can have lunch. The sound is faint, but she would recognize it anywhere. She comes to a halt on the snow-covered sidewalk, hands pressed to her mouth; the tears welling at the corners of her eyes are biting cold. She doesn’t care.

Far above, alone in the living room, Viktor presses his chin to the violin harder and plays on.

 

 

Viktor has never thought of himself as a man of faith; he ascribes to no gods or gospels, only to truths he sees with his own eyes. But after so much has been taken from him and so much has been spent, there is no more room in him for surprise when _she_ appears.

He has been playing for hours, day after day, every tune he has ever coaxed from his fingers. Every song he had ever made for Yuuri, even those he had never finished, never given; music of his own devising, strings of notes plucked from his mind and the depths of the emptiness inside of him. He plays and he closes his eyes, sees Yuuri on the ice, sweeping lines of motion; sees Yuuri in their bedroom, with smiles and soft skin; Yuuri in the summer sun, everything Viktor could ever want and ask for.

Viktor plays what he cannot put into words and no longer has to, not when the boy from Hasetsu is not here to listen. He plays as Orpheus incarnate, violin instead of lyre, for a Eurydice who has been taken from him.

Persephone watches slender fingers dance over strings; sees their redness, their calluses, their weariness, and their determination to play on. She stands and listens, in her dark dress with its dead flowers, to a requiem far deeper and more painful than a man should ever know or bring forth. She feels both human and immortal parts stir inside her, at this reminder of a man who had walked the path to Hades long before, to beg of her to give him his world back.

When Viktor has finished, drawn out the last notes and let them reverberate in the air, this elegy he was never able to say, she speaks.

“Ask, mortal,” she says simply, a cold voice in the grey morning light. “Ask, and I shall give as I once did, ages and centuries ago, to one who has lost such as you.”

Viktor confronts her, head high and eyes hollow; he clasps the bow tight and faces the Queen of the Underworld, resplendent and terrifying in all her inhuman glory. For the first time since Yuuri had died, he speaks.

_“Give him back.”_

 

 

The Underworld is very, very white.

The bones that form its structure are white, the fogs that spreads throughout is white, and the eerie glow that bathes everything is a chilling white edged with sickly green. But this white is not warm and welcoming; the white of the Underworld is bleak, barren, and daunting to the bone. It is the absolute lack of color, of life, and in his navy blue shirt and purple sock Viktor feels quite small.

The Lord of the Dead himself does not look pleased.

“What business does a mortal have in Hades?” he booms as Viktor approaches, violin in hand, far calmer than a human has the right to be when he is in the depths of the underworld and still breathing. Persephone floats up to her husband, pale hair streaming behind her.

“Another Orpheus, my love. He has asked, and I have brought him here.”

Hades turns his severe and stony gaze on Viktor, who looks back with defiance etched in his gaunt cheeks, the sharp cut of his shoulders. Then Hades turns to Persephone with a weary expression, not at all like the ruler of the dead and damned. “This is for his beloved, is it not? Why do you ask for him? He came to me in certainty, knowing you remained on earth; his thread parted as easily as water for a ship.”

In response, Viktor lifts his violin and plays the selfsame song that Persephone had heard in the emptiness of his flat. In the Underworld where one only hears the cries of the dead and the roars of Cerberus, the music is glorious and raw and anguished. The white of the Underworld turns Viktor’s skin nearly translucent, his hair colorless, but Viktor closes his eyes and sees only Yuuri, soft and warm, whose love was simple and straightforward. Yuuri taking his hand, leading him on to anywhere and everywhere; Yuuri kissing him and kissing him in the dark of their bedroom. Yuuri at the end of every routine, with one final gesture: right hand on his heart, left outstretched to where he knows Viktor is, always would be.

Persephone kneels at her husband’s feet and listens. Hades watches, impassive, and feels his ichor stir as he, too, remembers a pitiful Grecian man playing a very similar song in these very halls.

When Viktor has finished, Hades stands, curling robes of smoke sweeping from his shoulders and the bone crown of the Underworld at his brow. He gestures, and Persephone calls out a clear, heartrending note. There is a whisper of air and suddenly Katsuki Yuuri stands before Viktor, still in the coat and jeans he’d been wearing the night he had died. He shuffles his feet, bites his lip, and smiles at Viktor – Yuuri, _Yuuri,_ unchanged and looking so very alive. Viktor cries out and starts forward, but Hades stops him with a wave of his hand.

“The same rules, mortal, as when Eurydice was returned to Orpheus in the days when we gods freely walked the Earth. Not one look, nor touch, nor word from you towards this man, until you both have crossed the threshold of the Underworld. Break this and he is lost to you forever, until your own thread is cut and your soul comes to rest with his. Do you understand?” Hades trains his dark eyes on Viktor, who nods, tight-lipped and trembling. “Very well. Go; he shall be right behind you.”

As Viktor turns, Persephone rises, the folds of her gown billowing around her. She catches Viktor’s hand in both of hers, with a touch so cold it burns his skin. “Heed my husband’s words, mortal, and have not the fate of Orpheus the Greek. Even the slightest glimpse will revoke this gift, and your beloved will remain here forever.”

She lets him go with one last, emphatic look, then drifts back to her throne. Viktor closes his eyes as a shiver of foreboding runs down his spine, and then he walks from the halls of Hades without looking back.

 

 

The path back to the upper world is long and winding, the cobblestones uneven beneath Viktor’s feet. It reminds Viktor a little of the path at a park back in St. Petersburg, one he and Yuuri had walked down many times on many walks, in their many days together.

( _And how gently Yuuri had wound the scarf around Viktor’s neck, reminding him not to catch a cold because he had a performance coming up; how warm had his touch been when they’d held hands and meandered through the chilly night. Viktor had been telling Yuuri about his time growing up in this city, about wanting to be a football player and an astronaut and an engineer, about how he’d fallen in love with music. And all the leaves strewn across the path, Yuuri jumping and crunching every one he could get at, just to make Viktor laugh—_ )

Except for Viktor’s footsteps and breathing, all is silent.

(He tries so hard not to think that when they return, his life will no longer be silent, will once again find the color that Yuuri had brought in with his pink cheeks and bright eyes.)

The temptation to look back, to reach behind him and _touch,_ is greater than any craving Viktor has ever known; it is sheer _need,_ because Yuuri was taken from him, was gone too long, but now he is _right there_ and—

There is a small thought that arrests Viktor’s steps: _is he?_

He cannot hear Yuuri, cannot see him. Viktor can only trust that Hades is good on his word, and Yuuri is following behind. But in tangibles and absolutes, there is nothing to make certain that there is someone a few steps behind him; nothing tells him that Yuuri is truly _there._

(And Viktor is not a man of faith; he ascribes to no gods or gospels. He needs to see and understand for himself, by himself—)

The gate is close. Hades and Persephone are far behind them. Surely – surely he can look? Surely he can check, just once, because while Yuuri had always been there when Viktor had looked, within easy reach of his hands and his heart – that had been when they were both alive and breathing and finding each other’s heartbeats. That had been when Viktor could look, and _touch,_ and make sure.

It would just be one look.

( _Have not the faith of Orpheus,_ Persephone had warned.)

But Viktor needs to _see,_ to know for sure.

_Yuuri had always been there—_

But not that one night, walking home in the snow, the screech of tires on asphalt and a thud so sickening that for days after Viktor would wake up to the sound echoing in his ears, nauseated and panicked.

_He shall be right behind you._

Viktor has gone so many long, agonizing days without.

It would be just one look.

Just one, and they are almost there.

Just one look.

When Viktor crosses the threshold, he tightens his grip on the violin bow and barely, slightly, imperceptibly turns his head.

Yuuri stands there, just a few steps away, inside the gates of Hades.

Their eyes meet, and in Yuuri’s gaze Viktor realizes that he has condemned himself to his own hell, because for this second time Yuuri will be taken from him, but this time it is well and truly his fault.

The last Viktor sees of Yuuri is of the man reaching out, mouth open as if to say something, growing more and more faded with every excruciating heartbeat. Viktor starts forward, desperate for just one touch, just _one,_ just one more brush of his skin against Yuuri’s, but he has barely shifted his bones when Yuuri vanishes.

Viktor’s hand closes around empty air.

The violin and its bow clatter to the ground.

Yuuri is gone.

All at once Viktor is back in his apartment, standing in the living room and surrounded by every memory of a life he had built with the man he loves. There is the faintest scent of lilies and incense in the air; the smells of a funeral, of the dead.

Viktor drops to his knees and screams, sobbing into the silence, clutching at his chest.

Down in Hades, in the Elysian Fields, Yuuri thinks he can hear the soft notes of a violin.


End file.
